ABSTRACT
This thesis constitutes a social history of Krugersdorp that examines how the
town was made during a formative period of profound and rapid change from
1887 to 1923. This thesis will argue that the making of Krugersdorp was a
complex process where society shaped the built environment and where
changes in the built environment, in turn, influenced society. Ideological, political
and economic rivalries caused changes in Krugersdorp’s urban society and these
changes were, in turn, reflected in the built environment. The consequent
changes in the town’s architecture, the layout and the distribution of buildings,
influenced, in turn, how social groups interacted with one another. Thus, the
residents and the built environment, the ‘flesh’ and the ‘stone’, were mutually
influential.
In the course of competing and co-operating with one another, certain interest
groups, during specific periods, obtained the upper hand over the town and used
this domination to shape Krugersdorp in their own interests. During the late
1880s and early 1890s, the town was made largely by white, English-speaking
‘pioneer’ miners who hailed from places as diverse as Cornwall and Australia as
well as various South African mining towns such as Kimberley and Pilgrim’s
Rest. These men formed part of a ‘crew culture’ of itinerant workers moving
between mining centres across the British Empire, Southern Africa and United
States. They were transient roughnecks who made Krugersdorp a fragile,
temporary structure one-step ahead of a ghost town as well as a ‘Devil’s Dorp’
which was one of the most violent places in the Transvaal.
The late 1890s were increasingly dominated by a white, English-speaking middle
class whose members were determined to impose order and morality on the
disorderly and immoral miners. A professional and commercial elite fraction from
within this class dominated local political bodies, societies, sports clubs, charity
organisations and the business community of Krugersdorp. They used their
leadership positions in the local churches to build large stone structures in order
to inspire the transient white miners to settle and raise families. They also
employed their political and social dominance over the town, as well as their
control over the local media, shortly after the turn of the century, to shape
Krugersdorp, slowly but surely, into a stable town that was safe and pleasant to
live in.
During the 1890s, this same group became increasingly patriotic as expatriate
Britons who openly clashed with the local Dutch-speaking white elite, that, in
turn, became national chauvinist Transvaal Republicans. As ideological tensions
increased after the Jameson Raid of 1896 and in the months leading up to the
South African War of 1899-1902, this ideological tension between the white
political elites was reflected semiotically in the built environment. These changes,
in turn, influenced its residents by increasing the levels of hostility among them.
After the War, the expatriate ‘British’ elite turned Krugersdorp into a ‘British Imperial’ town where Union Jacks, bunting and evergreens decorated the town
on patriotic holidays and ‘jingo’ structures like the ‘Coronation Park’ were
established. Within a few years, however, the town settled into a state of relative
social harmony and co-operation that was reflected in the built environment in the
form of new buildings that ‘spoke’ of co-operation such as the Wanderers Sports
Grounds. These Sports Grounds - where people from both cultural groups would
join the same sports teams - were laid out between the ‘jingoistic’ Coronation
Park and the ‘Transvaal Republican’ Paardekraal Monument.
As the white population settled down after the South African War and as
ideological tensions lessened, so many miners settled down with their families or
married and raised children. Large numbers of children changed the town’s
demographical profile and began to shape the town in new ways. The presence
of children required many changes in the built environment, especially in the form
of new schools. Under Milner’s Anglicisation policy, Krugersdorp’s children were
supposed to be indoctrinated into loyal British subjects by the schooling system
and associated activities like the Boys’ Cadets and the Scouts. Over time,
however, this ‘imperial project’ was challenged by a variety of interest groups, not
least by parents and the children themselves. By the period 1905-6, a nascent
‘South Africanism’ arose instead and was reflected in changes in the school
curriculum and the relative failure of the cadet and scouting movements.
Indian residents who had made their way to the town as traders and hawkers
since the late 1880s, also began to exercise an influence over the town by the
turn of the century. White, English-speaking shopkeepers from the commercial
elite attempted to isolate or ‘quarantine’ Indian shopkeepers and hawkers by
associating them with disease. This tactic failed and a scheme to remove Indians
to an ‘Asiatic Bazaar’ was thwarted by the determined resistance of the Indian
residents. This was led by Mohandas Gandhi, who defied the Town Council that
was dominated by their white commercial rivals. So effective was Indian
resistance that by 1914 Indian businesses were entrenched in the central
business district of the town.
Krugersdorp during the period 1910 to 1920 was also shaped by African and
Coloured residents, particularly women, who resisted attempts by the white Town
Council to close down the Old Location and move them to a distant New Location
or ‘Munsieville’, established in 1912. They did so because this would make it
difficult for them to earn a living by working for white residents as domestic
workers or by taking in laundry. Many of these women also made money by
brewing and selling liquor illicitly to black miners and they would have found it
difficult to do so in the New Location.
The white elite built a ‘Model Location’ at Munsieville in order to attract black
middle-class allies in their struggle against an increasingly radicalized black
working class and lumpenproletariat. This plan was thwarted as most residents
refused to move out of the Old Location. Apparently vengeful, the Town Council abandoned these plans and, in 1914, designed a new location at Randfontein
that was meant to be a harsh, fenced-in ‘ghetto’. Surprisingly, many Old Location
residents moved there despite its harsh features and continued to avoid the
supposedly more attractive New Location. They apparently did so because the
Randfontein Location was close to a railway station that linked the location
residents to white residents and the black miners on nearby mines.
The Town Council clashed with black women in the location throughout the year
1917, leading to the appointment of an Inquiry. At this Inquiry, the local black
middle class openly sided with black working class women who tried to make a
living selling liquor illicitly to black miners. Apparently learning from its mistakes,
the Town Council then adopted a new form of location at Lewisham in 1920 that
was less harsh than the Randfontein Location ‘ghetto’ but which also avoided the
features of the ‘Model Location’ at Munsieville. This concession can be
interpreted as a victory of African women who resisted the municipality’s plans
for them and forced these changes.
White female social reformers and activists also shaped Krugersdorp in the
period after 1905 and particularly during the First World War. Their reformist
activities reached a peak in 1916 where they dominated life in the town to the
point where it was fast developing into a ‘gynopia’ or ‘women’s town’. These
relatively young, mostly English-speaking, white females achieved reforms that
promoted ‘social purity’ and temperance. They transformed the social life of the
town in important ways by restricting white male expressions of sexuality and
access to liquor. They also fought and won a struggle for the female municipal
franchise and the right of women to stand as municipal candidates.
All these reforms had important implications for Krugersdorp and influenced its
built environment in certain ways. For example, female activists ensured that no
liquor outlets were established in Burghershoop during the First World War. After
1916, however, a conservative backlash inspired by the need for a ‘War Effort’
had driven most of these women literally back into their homes and female social
activism rapidly faded from public view. Their failure to sustain their reforms also
had an influence upon Krugersdorp, for example, many new liquor outlets were
established throughout Krugersdorp after 1916 and many reforms envisaged by
female municipal candidates were not carried out until much later.
White labourite political mobilization followed a remarkably similar trajectory and
shaped the town of Krugersdorp in important ways, particularly during the First
World War, reaching a peak in the years 1914-1916. Local white trade union and
labourite leaders, particularly those from the South African Labour Party which
was formed in 1909, began to shape Krugersdorp in terms of a vision of a white,
working-class town. These changes included municipal socialist schemes that
employed substantial numbers of white workers and policies such as site value
taxation, Saturday Half-Holiday and free, secondary education. These policies
were, however, never fully realized during the period under study. By 1917-8,labourite local politicians were on the retreat as the white commercial and
professional elite, who organised themselves politically into a pro-business
coterie of ‘Independents’, regained ascendancy. While labourites fought a
vigorous rearguard action, their vision of a white, working-class town was never
fully realized.
Finally the white commercial and professional elite attempted to impose their
vision of a legal town on the residents, particularly over the Indian residents and,
in the process, isolate or drive out Indian shopkeepers from the town. A number
of court cases were fought vigorously by the white and Indian commercial rivals
which the latter won in most instances, including the famous Dadoo Limited v
Krugersdorp Municipal Council, 1920. The white Town Council, dominated by
white commercial and professional interests, nonetheless, regained some degree
of control by the late 1920s and, after the 1922 Rand Revolt, had largely
achieved their vision of a legal town, leading to a period of political quiescence
and economic prosperity.
Each of these struggles were ‘inscribed’, in turn, into the built environment,
shaping its architecture, town planning, the position of its buildings and the
nature of its monuments. Thus, this thesis contends that the making of
Krugersdorp can be illuminated through an exploration of spatiality, an
examination of the meaning of place and an investigation of the local, regional,
national and the international influences on urban spaces. Krugersdorp was, in
the end, made by all of its residents, through their interaction with one another,
and with their built environment.